CONQUERING SPACE - ONE MAN AT A TIME

This op-ed appears in the March 25, 2012 issue of the weekly, Space News.

February 20, 2012 marked the fiftieth anniversary of the first American manned flight into Earth orbit, when John Glenn was launched atop a modified Atlas ICBM, tightly cocooned inside the Mercury capsule. It was memorable day for me, as I was propulsion engineer for that flight. In the ensuing years the manned program included four additional Mercury flights, nineteen Gemini launches, of which ten were manned, eleven crewed Apollo missions, two crewed Skylab missions, eleven STS flights to the Soviet Union’s MIR, thirty-six STS flights to construct and service the International Space Station, and approximately 88 orbital flights with the STS functioning as a payload carrier for NASA, commercial and DoD missions.

All formidable achievements, by any measure. Still, a perceptive observer of the space programs over those years must wonder a bit at the contrast between the highly productive, multiple missions undertaken by the unmanned segment of NASA, operating with budgets a fraction of the manned program, and the more elusive products of the manned program. One can’t help but notice that over those fifty years since John Glenn’s flight, the United States has kept an average of less than one astronaut in space. We aren’t going to conquer space with one person on the job.

There seems to be a lack of public awareness, and indeed lack of congressional awareness that space activities divide into two general categories: space exploration and space exploitation. Exploration is what the unmanned sector of NASA does superbly. The unfolding of knowledge about the solar system with probes, telescopes and robots, together with almost daily revelations about the vastness and composition of the universe is breathtaking. Hundreds of millions of Earth-like planets...... a year ago we had no idea. Within the Congress there is even a lack of concern regarding the importance of space exploration. Despite the fact that the entire NASA budget is only about half of one per cent of the Federal Budget (politicians know this) Congress has seized on the James Webb telescope, successor to the Hubble telescope as a program that should be axed, an action that is clearly political, and borderline reprehensible for a nation in the forefront of space exploration. The goal of space exploration is clear - to generate knowledge.

In contrast, the goal of space exploitation is to identify and initiate operations in areas that offer prospect of providing goods, improved services, unique work environment for research, and anything else that visionaries and entrepreneurs see as an opportunity for profit. The role of exploitation falls naturally within the purvey of manned missions, although cases can be cited where humans in space were not involved. The Federal Government may fund a development, essentially a pathfinder mission, until events converge so that commercial firms can take over and make a profit. The first pathfinder mission was performed by NASA, beginning with Telstar, before there was a manned space program. It confirmed Sir Arthur C. Clarke’s predictions that communications satellites placed in geosynchronous orbit could produce a sea-change in global communications. Commercial firms soon moved in and the result is the ongoing multibillion dollar enterprise that is the array of services now being provided by stationary satellites. Another example is the Global Positioning System (GPS), a constellation of about 21 satellites developed and placed into operation by the Department of Defense. The addition of a strong civilian signal kicked off enormously varied terrestrial applications.

An unfortunate turn of events resulting in a loss of direction took place with the wind-down of the Apollo program. “On to Mars” was the euphoric call after the last Apollo flight, and even before the program’s conclusion. A wet blanket was thrown over the whole manned program when the price tag was revealed and Congress balked. Adhering to its role in exploiting space for humanity’s benefit, a logical course for Apollo Phase II would have been return to the moon to search for high value minerals, following which, in the course of time, terrestrial mining concerns would take over. The Apollo mission was NASA’s Lewis & Clark expedition, but unfortunately not as enduring.

As it happened, a second opportunity for a pathfinder mission immediately occurred, when NASA elected to use remaining hardware from the Apollo program to fund the Skylab workshop. The program should have continued. It could have been the forerunner to colonies of orbital workstations and tourist destinations funded by private interests.

The rest is history - NASA departed from its role as exploiter of space to that of a transporter of payloads by taking up development of the Space Transportation System. The end product, the ISS, built after the STS role as a transporter turned prohibitively expensive, does fit the exploitation role with the exception that it is dead-ended. No one is going to build another ISS. Now, with NASA’s eyes on a mission that would take astronauts to the surface of an asteroid, it appears that pathfinder missions will be put off for some time. High adventure seems to be a more powerful draw.

Worthy pathfinder missions could be:

1. Return to the moon with the object of finding valuable resources such as rare earths, setting up refining prototypes using solar power, laying the ground work for terrestrial mining companies to take over.

2. Build a solar power system demonstrator, including both orbital and ground elements. Confirm or adjust findings in extensive previous studies. Lay the groundwork for utilities companies to invest and take over.

3. The ISS is a one-time creation. It won’t be replicated. Return to Skylab mode of smaller, numerous workshops of varying application, serving needs of other nations as well as the United States. Lay the groundwork for private industry, as well as hotel and tourist enterprises, to invest and take over.

Space exploitation will serve America best if there is promise of return in both quality of life improvement and financial gain. That, to me, for the present, is the proper role for manned space operations. It is worth emphasizing that the NASA’s role is to identify and perform the pathfinder missions. The Federal Government’s role is to approve and fund opportunities and burn down the risks to the point that commercial takeover is attractive.

Finally, more adventurous missions like a trip to an asteroid, a moon of Mars, or Mars itself can and should wait until the capability of sensors and robots is exhausted. Staying on the present path, with one or two astronauts doing duty in space, offers low prospect of conquering space, and the cost will continue to be very high.

SEQUOIA

We were nearly your undoing.
You couldn’t know the power
of those striplings at your feet,
armed with stone honed axes
and twelve-foot crosscut saws.

You had no understanding
of sizzling steel cables,
groaning pulley blocks,
agonized chuffing
of donkey engines.

And we didn’t understand,
like the Phoenicians,
thinking you were
part of Earth’s abundance,
ripe for reckless harvesting.

You are aged.
You might have set your roots
when Alexander battled Persians
on the banks of the Granicus.
Your rings: a proxy calendar
of events across millennia.

Now, in contemplation
on where our place is,
we know your presence
is a good thing.
You are a bulwark
against Pacific storms.
You are the lesson
that teaches human endurance.

From "For Love of Trees" ©

FRAILTY OF THE LESSER GODS

My Dear Trill,

First I want to thank you, Trill, for the gift of a model of NASA’s Space Shuttle. It is a nice addition to my small collection of space memorabilia. You might be interested to know that at one time I was invited to participate in the design of the Shuttle, but I thought the concept was a bad idea and turned down the opportunity. As it developed, it was indeed a bad idea and cost taxpayers an enormous amount of money for little return. In the end, the system was shut down, not because it was worn out, but because it cost a billion dollars every time it was launched. However you look at it, launching into space is a costly business.

But enough about rockets. It’s a subject I might take up in another letter. It is such a pleasure to read the informative, long letters you send to me. Friends seldom write letters anymore. The postman leaves sheaves of ads and runs. It seems that text messaging has taken the place of letter writing, but to me it appears to be a slippery slope to illiteracy. Imagine what is lost when someone asks for a date with: R u bz 2nite?

I want instead to write about something that has been churning in my mind for some years and finally coming into focus. I hope these thoughts do not offend you, as I’m deeply aware of your unwavering, unquestioning lifelong faith. Still, what I have to say adds to the spiritual aspects of self, rather than subtract from it.

The general idea is that insofar as humans are concerned, whether or not there is an omnipresent GOD doesn’t matter, despite all the learned and prophetic voices across human history, from Shiva to Confucius, to Abraham, Jacob and Isaac, to Jesus Christ, to apostles Peter and Paul, to Mohammed, to Martin Luther, to Joseph Smith, to Hegel, to Spinoza, to Schopenhuer, to Niebuhr, to Schweitzer, to the Pope and all the Cardinals and Bishops of the Catholic Church, to American Evangelistic pastors of mega churches, to anti-deists Dawkins, Hitchens and Harris. to the Dalai Lama, to......

It doesn’t matter. GOD is detached. GOD is not involved. GOD is not attentive to human needs. Long, long ago, the GOD job was farmed out to lesser gods.

Indeed, some among them came close to the theme of this letter. Spinoza’s philosophy bears on it. Albert Schweitzer was alive when James Watson and Francis Crick, building on the work of Rosalind Franklin, Raymond Gosling and others, modeled the DNA strand as a double helix, containing everything needed to define a living being. But during those last years before his passing Schweitzer was wholly involved with the problem of eliminating nuclear weapons. His concepts of “Will to Live, ethics, and mutual dependence all have relevance. Watson’s and Crick’s discovery was instrumental in kicking off the fields of biochemistry and nano-engineering that are leading to ability to grow replacement organs and tissue, and adjust and reconfigure DNA so even generational diseases may be eliminated. The perfect physical human can be engineered, taking over where GOD left off. The perfected human being is just around the corner.

That the concept of a detached GOD is reasonable emerges from the logic that gifts of conscience, reasoning ability, inquisitiveness, an urge to communicate, inventiveness, intuition, compassion, sense of reverence, a spirit of adventure, are all attributes common to one degree or another to those accorded to Gods across the ages, Even including ability to evaluate, make tradeoffs and choose (which quarterback to favor in the Superbowl?).

These are not original thoughts. A few lines from the poem , “God’s Sadness,” by Uraguayan poet Jules Supervielle, translated by Geoffrey Gardner (July-August 1991 American Poetry Review), reveals that others have reached similar conclusions. The poem begins:

“I see you coming and going over the trembling of the Earth

As in the first days of the world, but the difference is huge.

My work is no longer in me, I have given it all to you....”

An additional quote:

“......I can no more speak to you than the potter can speak to his pot.

Of the two of them one is deaf, the other mute before his work.

With no power to point it out,

I see you rushing towards a blinding precipice,

And I cannot breathe a word to you to help you get around it,

You must get clear of it all alone like orphans in the snow.

And each day I say to myself across the huge silence:

Here is another one going awry over what he could do right,

There is another one taking a false step, not looking where he should

and this one is leaning too far over the balcony,

Forgetting about gravity,

And that one did not check his engine,

Good-bye airplane, good-bye pilot!”

And still another:

“You have a brain and fingers to make the world as you would like it.

You have the ability to make reason live and lock up madness in a cage.

You have all the animals that make up the Creation,

You can run like a dog, swim like a fish

and plunge ahead like a tiger or like a week-old lamb.

You can make yourself a gift of death, like the reindeer or the scorpion.”

Contradictions within the idea of an involved GOD are manifold and lamely explained. Just as an example, let me cite the plausible instance of a planeload of well-to-do Evangelical Christians undertaking a vacation trip to a luxury Safari in Africa, the better to view GOD’s creations. Upon arriving, the senior pastor in the group leads a prayer of thanks to GOD for a safe trip and landing, with special blessings for the competent pilots. But in getting there, the airplane has overflown millions of square miles of territory, where humans originated, where humans are made just like the tourists, millions of them, on the edge of starvation, or who have already starved to death, and who live amidst constant misery. Preferential attentiveness on the part of GOD is difficult to accept.

Persons of faith are taught early to give GOD a pass on bad things that happen and to heap praise for good things. Or an explanation at highest levels within the clergy for a catastrophic event might be GOD’s punishment for errant ways, even to the original sin, for which punishment is eternal.

Fortunately, we now have only one GOD to deal with. The Egyptians had one hundred fourteen Gods. The Greeks had twelve and many minor ones. Religions of the Far East however still involve multiple Gods. Somehow, for the West and Mid-East everything got distilled down to one GOD, which simplifies matters greatly. But paradoxically that devolves into my argument that there are billions of lesser gods.

Suppose, Trill, that sometime in your formative years you are brought into awareness of a vast, orderly civilization, members of which perform manifold functions with astonishing precision and reliability. It has a population of around ten trillion intelligent beings....... about 10,000 times Earth’s population.

You are then told: “It’s all yours. You run it.”

That would be enough to frighten away even the most self centered egoist, but as it turns out, it is not all that complicated. All one needs to do is to keep it warm and dry and assure it a supply of food and water. The civilization is real and comprises the ten trillion or so unschooled, programmed, intelligent cells that are driven to, and perform a single task throughout their lifetimes. They are the substance of your skin, everything inside it, and everything growing out of it. Ten trillion living beings. Each is by any measure a thermo-chemical wonder - entropy seemingly working in the wrong direction. Scientists will tell you this isn’t so. The apparent entropy decrease in living things is at the expense of an increase somewhere else, and they have the calculations to prove it. The true nature of the driving force, which may be ubiquitous throughout the universe, is however elusive. Schweitzer calls it “Will to Live.”

Think about it, Trill. You are the overseer of ten trillion living beings. Quite an assignment for even a lesser god. But as it happens, there is much more involved, because there are seven billion lesser gods with the same general makeup, and the future of humanity, its very existence, is dependent upon how together they learn to put complex cultural issues aside and work toward the common good.

The human body with its astonishingly capable brain is an awesome phenomenon. More so because it provides the means to understand itself. Discoveries about how it works are on the par with revelations about the nature of the universe as provided by Hubble, Spitzer and other modern day terrestrial and orbital telescopes. Progress in knowledge is recent but is now moving rapidly and accelerating. It is hard to believe that concepts like Immaculate Conception were plausible within our grandparents’ lifetimes. Myths are falling by the wayside one after another.

A thermo-chemical wonder - so many complex systems, integrated to operate in unison and in equilibrium for a hundred years if all goes well. Something seemingly as simple as the healing of a wound is an astonishingly orderly and beautiful process, and barely indicative of far more complex processes that operate continuously throughout the body. When the body experiences a wound, an alert is sounded and the forces and materials necessary to cope with it are marshaled and directed to the location, wherever it is, to cope with it. Then follows a complex cascade of events that is something like building a house, each event dependent on completing or partially completing the one preceding. Chemicals are applied to form clots to stop the bleeding. Cleanup crews clean and sanitize to prevent infection. Blood vessels are formed to move in construction materials. Scaffolds are built which facilitate mounting of new tissue. Collagen fastens on the walls of the injury to draw them together. At the molecular and cellular level all is done in vast numbers and unbelievable precision. A hard cover is built to protect the healing wound and in due time its nutrients are cut off so it dies and falls away, revealing the newly healed spot with a tender pink skin. Meantime, continuous with the healing process, unneeded scaffolds, excess cells and construction debris are chewed up into miniscule bits so blood vessels can transport them to the body’s disposal system. This is just a trivial example of how the body handles an emergency. Far more complex things go on all the time, around the clock, year after year after year. (as an aside, I pause to wonder: what a busy time it must have been when men battled each other with swords!)

Still, by some measures, the body is imperfect and could stand improvement. The immune system doesn’t measure up to all threats and invasions. Lost teeth don’t get replaced. There are organs and parts of organs that are no longer needed. Genetic defects are often generational. For humans, evolution appears not to be a mechanism for further advancement except in the brain. Whereas in other species, newborns with defects simply don’t survive, and genetic lines are strengthened by genes from dominant males, in humans almost everyone survives, and the unfortunate handicapped ones are nursed through life. Everyone is considered to have value. As lesser gods, it is left to humans to solve the problem.

I mentioned that events are progressing in a direction where biologically perfect humans can already be envisioned. There are futurists among us who see that achievement as just the first step to an incredibly different future for humans. Prominent among them is inventor Ray KurzweiI, author of the book “The Singularity is Here,” who predicts that computers will be the equal of human brains by 2020. Subsequently there will be development of massive computer capability that will end up in a symbiosis between the biological body and an external computer world that has enormous capability, able to construct anything, provide for all human biological needs, as well as being self replicating.

I have mixed feelings about Kurzweil’s predictions. They leave open the problem of what will occur with the spiritual self. The benefits of controlled evolution must be weighed against what is lost. It may be inevitable. Yet, in the morning, when I sit at breakfast and twenty or more doves gather outside my kitchen door to feed at seeds that I scatter on the concrete pad, I marvel at a gathering of seemingly perfect creatures, evolved from dinosaurs that trod the planet long before humans appeared. Is there a practical end for biological evolution? It seems so to me.

So finally, I find myself ending on a somber note. The lesser gods have got to get their act together, or all is lost. GOD is not going to solve the problem of survival with an all-encompassing act of benevolence. The warnings are manifest. The mutant frogs of Minnesota, now appearing elsewhere, are the canaries in the coalmine. Humans have compelled other life forms to breed and live in polluted water. It should not be surprising that wildly mutant forms would appear. It brings to mind the Love Canal disaster in Niagara Falls, NY, where homes were built on a site where chemicals were buried, where over fifty percent of the children born there had at least one genetic defect. Rachel Carson (clearly a lesser god in my view) delivered powerful warnings in her book, Silent Spring, detailing how the proliferation of use of the insecticide DDT posed a death sentence to bird life. It is still in use in different parts of the world, but not in North America. It is environmentally persistent, however, and bio-accumulates, so its effects continue. The reckless side of industry and agriculture that results in tragic occurrences, at disturbing frequency, like Bophal, Exxon Valdez, the Gulf oil spill, and more insidious, long term damage like air and water pollution must somehow be brought to an end. The adverse effects are not just on humans, but upon all living things.

Dominion over the earth and all its living things could not possibly have meant pillaging, waste, poisoning and pollution, It must certainly have meant reverence for life and sensitive, compassionate husbandry of the environment and Earth’s resources.

My dear Trill, I fear this letter has gotten too long to hold your attention. Still, I have only walked the perimeter of this deep and compelling subject.

Until the next time, please know I think of you often and I count you as one who can’t wait for biological perfection. You have already taken the step, having visibly adopted a life style that identifies you too as one of the lesser gods who walk on our planet.

Affectionately yours,

Ed

This article may be freely copied and disseminated .

LETTER TO THE EDITOR

To the Editor:

I suppose the opinions, mostly by academics, regarding Obama's tax structure and raising taxes on the wealthy (U/T Sunday, Feb. 19, Business Section) were meant to deliver an air of credibility to the notion that higher taxes on the wealthy are a bad idea. All but one concurred that it is a bad idea. How wrong they are. It has long been accepted that a measure of how well the economy is doing is the increase of Federal debt as a function of GDP, expressed as percentage gain or decrease. With higher taxes, debt/GDP growth from the Roosevelt/Truman administrations through the Carter administration ranged from -24.9 % to +.2 %. With lowered revenue, debt/GDP increased to + 20.6 % in the Reagan administration and another 15% in the George H.W. Bush administration. It was reversed in Clinton's administration to -8.6% by the end of his two terms. It then took a sharp turn positive in the George Bush administration and has remained positive with Obama as president. Higher taxes on the wealthy is an important element in a healthy economy, as a significant source of revenue. Your selected academics would be good choices for the task of creating a misery index for the wealthy that corresponds to higher taxes.

Sincerely,

Edward Hujsak

HADLEY'S DILEMMA

A thirty year career in nano-engineering finally ended with Hadley retiring to the small town of Perryville, Missouri, on the west bank of the Mississippi. He settled into a comfortable, nondescript cottage with a dog and two cats. It was not the house.... any house would do.... it was the large, clean workshop to the rear of the cottage which would do very well for a laboratory that determined his choice of residence. Over the years Hadley had acquired a collection of excellent surplus scientific equipment, all obsolete in the fast moving nano-technology field, but well suited to the tinkering he hoped to engage in. In short order he had the laboratory furnished and up and running.

Hadley’s single great achievement, although he kept it secret, was a method of extracting carbon from the atmosphere. Using the sun’s energy and a self-replicating nitrile trigger molecule he developed, carbon dioxide molecules could be coaxed into releasing their oxygen to the atmosphere. In the process the carbon atoms then attached themselves to each other in three-dimensional lattices that grew endlessly, as rapidly as they could attract passing carbon dioxide molecules. That was the job of the wind and natural air circulation. Hadley’s early experiments revealed that the process begins with a stalagmite growth so thin it was invisible to the eye. A person could be impaled if he tripped over it. Had he lived, he would have realized his vision of its growth as a single enormous crystal, cylindrical in shape, diamond hard, nearly indestructible and ultimately growing to hundreds of meters in diameter and kilometers in height. Depending on availability of the triggering molecules, the pillars could appear in countless numbers. They could appear anywhere on Earth.

Hadley was an ethical man. He was keenly aware that the process was a one-way phenomenon. The carbon structures would grow to enormous dimensions with nothing to stop the growth until the carbon dioxide source was depleted. Needless to say, this would ultimately be fatal for plant and animal life. Until he developed a control method that would stop the process when atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide dropped to acceptable levels, he resolved that the secret would remain with him, even should he die. Meantime, a lone black flask containing trillions of trigger molecules from his original experiments remained tightly sealed. It sat in a locked cupboard above a bench in his laboratory workshop.

By 2050 the dire predictions for uncomfortable living on Earth that were projected to occur by the end of the twenty-first century were already being realized. Scientists pointed to the awesome power of positive feedback. Efforts to reverse carbon presence in the atmosphere had failed miserably. In fact the atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide more than quadrupled since the turn of the century. Hot weather, violent storms, flooding of lowlands, ice cap melting and sea level rise were all consequences. Loss of life, starvation and human misery compared with nothing that had ever happened in human history. The International Gallup human misery index, defined as the spread between rates of change of births and deaths as established by the United Nations and instituted in 2020, was rising at an alarming ten percent per year.

Hadley was concerned with the urgency of doing something. Still, he balked at the thought of releasing his discovery until he could find a way to shut down the trigger molecule. The dilemma was resolved by a perverse act of nature. Around midnight on a summer’s night a mile-wide tornado swept across Perryville, reducing the entire town to rubble. Hadley died as the winds reduced his cottage to kindling. Behind his home, the walls and roof of his laboratory were sucked high up into the whirlwind. When they dropped to the ground, the flask containing Hadley’s trigger molecules shattered. Its contents were then swept up by the winds and carried to far places over the surrounding country, and even up into the jet stream that carried them into lands abroad.

The jet black, cylindrical stalagmites were first viewed as an oddity. They generated scattered opinions regarding their origin. Materials scientists guardedly offered to the public only that it was something nearly as hard as diamond, but strangely did not contain the trace elements common to diamond. The presence of the trigger molecule escaped them, as samples were meticulously cleaned for analyses, eliminating their presence. Some offered as pure speculation that something new had rained in from outer space. That was followed by what was at first considered an absurd speculation that as an absorber of carbon, the stalagmites may be just the device needed to reduce the carbon concentration in the atmosphere. That soon became more fact than speculation, as carbon dioxide concentration in the atmosphere grew perceptibly lower every year.

The casual observation that the pillars came from space was sufficient to kick off a unity of perspective from every religion around the world. The stalagmites were sent by God to save the planet. The objects, rapidly growing to exceed in size most man-made structures, became religious shrines. The most frequently visited were kilometer high, two hundred meter diameter cylinders that rose in New York City’s Central Park, Beijing and Los Angeles.

When the news was revealed that carbon dioxide concentration had finally dropped to the comfortable levels experienced in mid twentieth century there were huge celebrations. Then the bad news struck. There was no stopping carbon absorption by the carbon spires. Hadley’s pillars had reached the point that he had feared. Unless the absorption process was stopped, they had the potential to deplete the levels of CO2 necessary to sustain plant life, and in consequence would wipe out all terrestrial life. All manner of attempts were tried, but they remained indestructible. One method sought to topple the towering objects and bury them in trenches dug out in the vicinity, but they were too big and too heavy to move.

The end of world prophets entered their element, taking over the airwaves. The end of terrestrial life was at hand. Panic reigned. There was no place to go. For many, the rapture was close. Preparations for departure began to make sense for millions.

President Sean McAdam sat at dinner with his wife Chloe and their two children, Sandra, 7 and Arthur Alexander, 5. The usual family discussion, stories, laughter, inquiries about school were absent. The president was in somber discussion about the carbon stalagmites with Chloe. The children eyed each other across the table, toyed with their meals, looking puzzled. Finally Sandra, who had been drawing carbon cylinders that afternoon during her art class, looked at her father.

“Daddy?”

“Yes Sandy?”

“Why don’t you paint them?”

Sean McAdam stared at his daughter. His eyes opened wide. A smile broke across his face. “From the mouths of babes....”

Following dinner Sean returned to the Oval Office. His thoughts turned to the carbon cylinder growing in the Rose Garden, which in the few months since its appearance had grown to a meter in diameter and four times that in height. He lifted the phone and called for the immediate appearance of the grounds superintendent and the Captain of the guard.

“I need you to keep this secret,” he began. “I need you to do this tonight. I need you to paint the cylinder with black epoxy. Completely, don’t forget the top. Let me know every day if cracks have appeared in the paint.

A month later Sean paid a visit to the Rose Garden cylinder. He ran his hands over the smooth exterior. His eyes searched for cracks in the paint that would indicate the cylinder had grown. He found none. He nodded with a look of satisfaction. What an interesting session this would be, when he called in his top scientists from the Foundation.

Historical records showed no knowledge of Hadley’s part in the crucial affair of the saving of Planet Earth. Come right down to it, Hadley, in his search for a scientific way to inhibit his brainchild, the self-replicating nitrile molecule, would likely never have thought of paint.

Copyright © 2012 Edward Hujsak

PUTTING THE BRAKES ON PIPA

The hundreds of thousands of e-mails sent to legislators last week served at least to put the brakes on the Protect the IP Act (PIPA), and attests to the power of protest that still works to the benefit of the populace.

My own communications stressed that the Internet is still in its infancy and it will not help future development of this remarkable asset if legislators are pressured to shackle it. The Internet at its present state of development is still an initial inroad into a world where big improvements in bandwidth will allow anyone in the world, anywhere, to access instantaneously all recorded information. Together with huge advancements in supercomputers and no indication at all that Moore’s Law is coming to an end, the last thing the Internet needs is ability of various parties to mess it up.

Interestingly, there was an immediate reply from Senator Feinstein, who is one of the sponsors of the bill. It follows:

Dear Mr. Hujsak:

I received your letter expressing opposition to the “Preventing Real Online Threats to Economic Creativity and Theft of Intellectual Property Act,” commonly known as the “PROTECT IP Act.” I appreciate knowing your views on this matter.

The “PROTECT IP Act” (S. 968) gives both copyright and trademark owners and the U.S. Department of Justice the authority to take action against websites that are “dedicated to infringing activities.” These are websites that have “no significant use other than engaging in, enabling, or facilitating” copyright infringement, the sale of goods with a counterfeit trademark, or the evasion of technological measures designed to protect against copying.

The bill does not violate First Amendment rights to free speech because copyright piracy is not speech.

America’s copyright industry is an important economic engine, and I believe copyright owners should be able to prevent their works from being illegally duplicated and stolen. The protection of intellectual property is particularly vital to California’s thriving film, music, and high-technology industries.

I understand you have concerns about the “PROTECT IP Act.” While I voted in favor of this bill when it was before the Senate Judiciary Committee, I have also been working with California high-technology businesses to improve the bill and to address the concerns of high-tech businesses, public interest groups and others. I recognize the bill needs further changes to prevent it from imposing undue burdens on legitimate businesses and activities, and I will be working to make the improvements, either by working with Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-VT) or through amendments on the Senate floor.

On May 26, 2011, the Senate Judiciary Committee passed the “PROTECT IP Act” for consideration by the full Senate. Please know I will keep your concerns and thoughts in mind should the Senate proceed to a vote on this legislation. As you may be aware, Representative Lamar Smith (R-TX) has introduced similar legislation, the “Stop Online Piracy Act” (H.R. 3261), in the House of Representatives.

Once again, thank you for sharing your views. I hope you will continue to keep me informed on issues of importance to you. If you have any additional questions or concerns, please do not hesitate to contact my Washington, D.C. office at (202) 224-3841.

Wishing you a happy 2012.

Sincerely yours,


Dianne Feinstein
United States Senator

THE END OF RELIGION

This does not come as recent news. Books have been published on the subject : “The End of Faith” by Sam Harris; “Why Christianity Must Change or Die” by Bishop John Shelby Spong; “God is not Great” by Christopher Hitchens are examples.

The foundations of the hitherto unassailable bastions of faith are crumbling. The gifts of comprehension and reasoning, so highly developed in humans, now have the benefit of mountains of knowledge, as well as rapidly developing information regarding the nature of the universe and how belief dictates human behavior, with tolerance at one extreme and tyranny at the other. Moreover, mechanisms of information dissemination have taken astonishing leaps forward. No longer need humans be heavily dependent on texts developed long ago by male supremacists for whom treatment of women like chattel, the obligation of slaves to obey their masters, high esteem for persons of great wealth, torture, vengeance and wars were acceptable. Claims of conversation and direction from God as the source of their directives notwithstanding, there has never been a verifiable direct conversation with God. Humans have presumptively assumed that the Creator reasons as humans do, although there is no clear idea why this should be so. There is no basis for such an assumption other than human projection. Quite plausibly, a Creator is as likely to deal in absolutes.

Just as the maintenance manual for a Model-T Ford won’t do for a modern automobile, the Bible, Quran and even modern texts whose origin was a time when Earth was the center of the universe are unfulfilling, and are arguably often the source of anguish and pileups on the human scene. The wisdom of the ages pales before the avalanche of information and knowledge that is emerging in contemporary times. Soon the Holy Bible, the Quran, The Book of Mormon and all other religious tomes will take their places on the bookshelves by Chaucer, Beowulf, Paradise Lost, The Iliad, Shakespeare’s Plays....... all stories, entertaining and shaping humanity as only stories can.

Hubble and Spitzer telescopes have revealed a universe that is incredibly vast and beautiful, quite beyond an individual’s ability to grasp.....but it sure is fun to try. Physicists and mathematicians have quite convincingly determined that everything began with the big bang (soundless, as it turns out), and are more or less content to cede that territory to creationists, as for the time being the presence of a creator at the beginning is as satisfactory an explanation as any. Those who live strictly by “The Book” must somehow resolve the conundrum of instantaneous creation as opposed to a leisurely six days. But there are many questions; Did the Creator start with a plan? Or was the beginning simply something like: I wonder what will happen if I push this button.....KABLOOEY!

Most likely, religions will be replaced with community spirit and humility, given the new awareness of humans’ microscopic presence in a universe or universes so vast that comprehension is impossible. The fact that humanoid presence for a seemingly awesome four million years or thereabouts represents only .000003% of the age of the universe is cause enough for humility and wonder. In the grand scheme of things, is it conceivable that the Creator, after 13 billion years’ had in mind that tiny slot as the culmination of all it intended to achieve? It would be quite amazing...... an experiment that could fail, as the reins were clearly loosened when the human species achieved dominance.

What is sound, reasonable, has scientific basis and is verifiable is at play now to an extent that has never occurred before. Astrophysicists are now able to extrapolate from a few discoveries of planets circling other stars that there are likely hundreds of millions of Earth-similar planets “out there.” With this realization the immediate question might be: Where do we fit in?

Suppose we accept that the Creator really is intelligent, does reason and operates somewhere within the scope of what rational humans deem acceptable. Nearly a hundred years ago Albert Einstein, convinced that Earth occupied a unique position in the fabric of the universe, argued convincingly that “God does not play Dice.” Just months ago Stephen Hawking, equipped with vastly more knowledge about the universe than Einstein had, argued convincingly that God indeed does play dice.” In fact, both conclusions may be true for us lesser intellects who still choose to exercise their powers of reason to the limits of our capability. We need not submit to views and pronouncements of superior or authoritative intellects. Anyone can play this game.

A comfortable position is that there was a plan. The Creator did plan and did reason. The universe would be very big. There wouldn’t be one Earth, but many. It would be too risky to “put all eggs in one basket.” The universe is necessarily made enormous in order to separate the millions of planets by distances so great that one cannot communicate effectively with another, contaminate another, or (God forbid) go to war with another.

Finally, it’s now a fair assumption that human populated Earth is of small consequence in the grand scheme of things. Earth will go on, minus a species. The extinction of passenger pigeons, for example, hasn’t changed things perceptibly. Thus far, religions, and conflicts between religions have arguably been one of the impediments to ensuring species longevity. Comprehension and reasoning must eventually put them aside for something better. Failing that, the future for humans on this planet could be bleak indeed.